An Inventory of Marx Playset Figures and Accessories
Manufactured from 1951 to 1979

Addendum F - Prehistoric Times

Contents
of this web site may not be reproduced or duplicated for use on the
Internet or for commercial purposes without permission by Eric Johns.

This
web site was created in late 2007, providing information about Marx
wild west playset figures on a single web page. It now
consists
of about 30 web pages, with information on figures, structures, terrain
pieces, and small accessories from playsets in many different themes.
It also has indexes for Playset Magazine and PFPC magazine.
I will continue
to update these pages as I obtain more information
and
photos. If you have
anything
to add to these pages or suggestions to make them
better, please e-mail me at
ericjohns4444@gmail.com.
I will be glad to attribute contributions
to you. And if you have questions or
comments, I am always glad to hear from you!

Please note: For the most part,
figures on this page
are shown in approximately proper proportion when compared
to other
figures. The primary exceptions to this are 1) 6-inch figures, which are decreased
by about half and 2) some larger terrain items that have been decreased in size.

A great deal of the information on this page comes from the
article "Prehistoric Sets, The Untold Story" written by Rusty Kern and
Glenn Ridenour, which appeared in Plastic Figure and Playset
Collector (PFPC) magazine, Issue 64. Marx dinosaurs are
also discussed in an article by Wilson McClung on toy dinosaur figures
in PFPC Issue 28, from which I have drawn additional information.
As of late 2011, Playset
Magazine had not featured the Marx prehistoric playsets in any of its
issues.

Marx first sold its dinosaur figures in 1955 at dimestores.
Two years later, the first Marx prehistoric playset appeared in the Sears Christmas Catalog for $4.67, including a group of 45mm cavemen and several terrain pieces. Cavemen
were never sold individually and appeared only in
playsets. PFPC Issue 66 points out that most of the
prehistoric animals are in a much smaller scale than the cavemen, about
25mm (1/72). At the same time, I am pretty sure that not all
the dinosaurs are in the same scale.

With
many popular movies of the time featuring monsters and dinosaurs in the
1950s, the company's dinosaurs sold well right from the start, and they
were (and remain) much in demand by fans of prehistoric
times. On the other hand, Marx
virtually guaranteed that its prehistoric playsets would not gain great
popularity by never creating any unique accessories or significant number of human figures in this theme. Marx probably did better with its cartoon Flintstones Play Set that used
some of the same dinosaurs (see Cartoons page of this web site).

Marx halted its production of prehistoric playsets in 1963, but the
company's subsequent owners produced several additional sets in the
1970s, adding large mountain pieces shown in the accessories
section below. The final playset was a storage box style World of
Dinosaurs shortly before the company went bankrupt in 1980.

Cavemen - 45mmPL-?
This small group of cavemen was available only in the company's prehistoric playsets. Of course, humans did not actually
live during the period that dinosaurs ruled the Earth, but Marx wanted
to provide kids a good guy versus bad guy scenario in all his playsets,
and cavemen against the dinosaurs did the trick. Us kids could
not have cared less that it was totally unrealistic. And, anyhow,
movies did the same thing, and they looked a lot more excitingly real to us kids than the boring facts did.

The figures were made in soft plastic and came in a variety of cream, brown, and tan colors.

While Marx' dinosaurs were and remain very popular, this group of
cavemen has taken a backseat to the many more popular figures in
the Wild West, military, cartoon, and other themes. That is
unfortunate, because when viewed through a magnifying glass (or
enlarged in photos as below), these figures prove to be almost
exquisitely sculpted. The variety of poses puts them well ahead
of the company's more violent 6-inch cavemen shown at the bottom of
this page. Marx could certainly have created quite a playset by
expanding the number of figures in this group, perhaps even including a
separate group of enemy cavemen to add a little human conflict.

Note that Pose 4 below is much smaller and stouter than the other
figures, and appears to either be a boy or come from a
different prehistoric line in the development of modern mankind.
Pose 5 also appears rather small, but I have found that several
Marx sitting and squatting poses are undersized. Females are notably absent.

1. Walking with club

2. Holding club and knife

3. Holding rock overhead

4. Crouching with spear

5. Preparing rabbit to cook

6. Starting fire with flint and rock

Recent Price Lines I have noticed

8 figures in 5 poses

$21

June 2013

Ebay

tan and cream

Dinosaurs - 1955 SeriesMarx' first dinosaurs were made
in three molds as shown below. They can be labeled by the size of
the animals represented, large, medium, and small. When initially
sold in dimestores, the a set of the large figures cost 25 cents, and
the medium and small were 10 cents. Initial figures were a pastel
green, but they were later made in many other colors, including gray,
red brown, and less often silver and tan.

The toy company MPC made similar dinosaurs at the same time as Marx,
many of them almost identical poses to the Marx poses. There are
differences -- they are slightly smaller -- and MPC figures are in more
glaring colors, such as bright red, yellow, and green. However, I
still find it hard to tell the difference sometimes, so you experts out
there please let me know if I have made any errors in the photos below.
Larry Tomikel has already pointed out that the photo I previously
listed as Marx re-issues is actually of MPC re-issues!

And many thanks to local (to me) collector Mike McGetrick, who has
recently helped me almost complete my collection of the Marx
dinosaurs.

PL-749

1. T-Rex (pot belly version)

2. Brontosaurus

4. Kronosaurus

PL-750

1. Trachodon

2. Pteranodon

3. Hadrosaurus

4. Ankylosaurus

5. Allosaurus

6. Stegosaurus

PL-755

1. Sphenacoden

2. Triceratops

3. Cynognathus

4. Dimetrodon

5. Plateosaurus

Ooops!
Collector Larry Tomikel has pointed out that these are MPC
re-issues, not Marx re-issues. Well, you can see how similar they
are to Marx.

Dinosaurs - 1959 Revision PL-977Eight of the dinosaurs issued
in 1955 were revised and manufactured in a second mold in 1959.
These were the Brontosaurus, T-Rex, Allosaurus, Triceraptos,
Stegosaurus, Ankylosaurus, Dimetrodon, and Trachodon. For the
most part, revisions were minor -- such as an added circular
impression on the bottom of a foot for molding purposes -- but the
T-Rex and Trachodon have more noticeable changes as shown below.
Additional information on the changes can be seen at Kent
Sprecher's web site and in Wilson McClung's article in PFPC Issue 28.

Revised "Skinny" T-RexChanges from original shown above are obvious!

Revised TrachodonNote change in position of outstreched paw from original.

Prehistoric Mammals and Additional DinosaursPL-1083

Additional dinosaurs, as well as prehistoric mammals, were added in
1961, the same year that Marx released its Flintstones Play Set.
Figures in playsets generally were soft plastic red brown, but
those sold separately on blister cards were in tan, a color than brings
out the details of the sculpting and is most popular (and expensive)
among collectors today.

1. Wooly Mammoth

2. Megatherium

3. Smilodon

4. Moschops

5. Struthiomimus

6. Iguanodon

7. Parasaurolophus

8. Styracosaurus

Terrain
The Mountain

Undoutedly
the most impressive terrain piece from Marx prehistoric sets was the
mountain that came with the set released in 1975 after Louis Marx had
sold
the company to Quaker Oats. According to Marx designer Frank Rice
in PFPC Issue 64, the mountain was used to generate additional income
from a mold created to produce a similar mountain in the company's Guns
of Navarone World War II playset. The mold also
was used in the wild west Comanche Pass and Ambush at Falling
Rock sets and
in an Iwo Jima military set.

While the military sets included only one large mountain piece, the
prehistoric and wild west sets included a smaller second mountain,
creating a pass between the two with a connecting arch at the top.
The yellow prehistoric pieces have a swinging bridge that
connects the two mountains about halfway up, while the tan wild west
pieces include a second rock archway instead, as well as a boulder for
the Indians to push off onto the unsuspecting cavalry below. In
addition, the floor of the pass between the two mountains was painted
to resemble a river in the prehistoric set, but was a trail or perhaps
a dry river for the
wild west.

While I presently have no photo of the prehistoric piece, it can
be
seen in the old Sears catalog advertisement below; photos of the wild
west
version are in the Wild West Section of this web site. Note that
the two mountains pieces are connected differently in the Wild West and
prehistoric sets shown below. I have not been able to connect my
Wild West mountains in the manner shown for the prehistoric set with
the small mountain at a right angle to the larger mountain, and from the photo below, it
appears to me that the top arch is longer for the prehistoric set.

Mountain with swinging bridgeCompare prehistoric set in
bottom right to Comanche Pass in top left. I believe either piece
can be set up whichever way desired, but am not certain.

Prehistoric
sets sometimes included smaller terrain pieces as shown below.
The first four pieces were also in some other playsets,
primarily wild west sets. The lower cave-bridge-pond piece was in the company's Daktari jungle sets.

All four large rock formations and pondPhoto courtesy of
Curtis Snell, Ebay pomspart

Small cliff with ladder and cave

Small cliff with lake

Arched land bridge

Connector clips

Combined cliff and bridge pieces

Vacuum Form Terrain Base

Playmat

Trees and Ferns

Marx included three palm trees in its
prehistoric sets, the same as those found in Zorro play.
These trees were in two or three pieces with the top parts in
a
soft plastic green, and the bottom trunk part a hard plastic brown.
Tim Geppert, in a PFPC article, has named this trio the "large single", "large double",
and
"small double." Tops are interchangeable among the trunks.

Mold numbers for the plams and the ferns below are
PL-760 for the tops and PL-761 for the bases. Rather nice
re-issues exist in slightly lighter colors than the originals.

Many thanks to the late Rob Colwell (Marxplayer on Ebay) for providing original palm trees and ferns for photos.

To go with the palm trees,
Marx also
produced two fern plants, also two-piece items with soft plastic tops
and hard plastic bottoms. One has three leaves on it and the
other four leaves; the bases are identical.

As noted in the previous group of palm trees, mold numbers for the ferns are PL-760 and PL-761. As with the palm
trees above, re-issues are slightly lighter in
color than the originals.

At least one prehistoric set also
included a dead tree, about 4-3/4 inches tall, as well as two
tree stumps that Tim dubbed simply
"large" and "small." You can find them in hard and soft
plastic gray. The large stump is 1-1/2 inches tall,
and
the small one 1-1/4 inches. With roots going every which way,
breadth of the stumps varies, but the larger is about 3 inches in
diameter at its widest point, and the smaller is about 2-1/2 inches.
These three items also appear frequently in Marx
military and wild west playsets.

Marx made a group of six large scale cavemen in the mid-1960s, along
with similar-sized figures in many other themes. Identified
as 6-inch figures, the company never made accessories or other figures
to go with
them. Other than their violent poses, the most
notable thing about these figures is their hairy chests.

Notice that baseball was around at the time of the cavemen; poses 5 and
6 below clearly show a pitcher and batter! I'd assume that pose 1
is an outfielder, pose 2 is an infielder (throwing the ball), pose 4 is
a baserunner, and pose 3 is the umpire (club up is for a strike, knife
up is for a ball, and no one argued with the ump). The game was a
little more dangerous in those days!

1. With spear

2. Holding rock overhead

3. With club and knife

4. With axe

5. Holding rock in right hand

6. Swinging club

Contents
of this web site may not be reproduced or duplicated for use on the
Internet or for commercial purposes without permission by Eric Johns.